


First Times (Are Always The Hardest)

by magic_and_hijinx



Category: Game Grumps, jacksepticeye
Genre: Comfort, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Needles, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-26
Updated: 2016-08-26
Packaged: 2018-08-11 04:02:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7875379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magic_and_hijinx/pseuds/magic_and_hijinx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack brings along his boyfriend, Dan, for support when he goes to get his first tattoo.</p>
            </blockquote>





	First Times (Are Always The Hardest)

Jack’s rampant breaths created little frothy clouds in the Irish winter air.  
“Are you alright?” Dan asked, his hand ghosting over Jack’s back.  
Jack nodded, slowly, as if he had to take the time to convince himself. “Yeah. I just…nerves.”

  
Dan smiled pleasantly, a tiny spot of warmth on an unforgiving morning. “You won’t even feel a thing.” His hand curled around Jack’s side, inadvertently pulling him closer to Dan. “I’m here. I’ve got you.”  
Jack let out a short, quiet chuckle. He closed the shred of distance between them and tilted his head onto Dan’s shoulder, partly to absorb the warmth from his fluffy jacket. “Thank you for that.”  
The frost-coated alleyway they were walking down was completely empty, and at night it would’ve been the perfect location for a horror movie scene. But right now, with the sun beaming down and betraying any masked murderers lurking in the shadows, it was just what Jack needed. Nobody to bear witness to his jagged breaths, his chattering teeth- ‘ _just the cold_ ’, he’d told Dan- or his racing heart. _Why am I so bloody nervous?_  
He’d known people who went and got tattoos every other week. _The pain is addictive,_ they’d tell him. _It’s just a pinprick_. A pinprick that was stirring Jack’s chest into a twister.  
They stopped when they got to the end of the alley, at the only shop so far that wasn’t boarded up. Through the two, wide-stretching windows at either side of the door, Jack could see people with all manner of wildly coloured hair, casually reading tattoo catalogues. Not one of them was bare-skinned; most sported elaborate murals of women, animals and symbols across their arms. His own green-haired reflection smiled meekly back at him in the shop window. _I almost fit right in._  
With his jacket sleeve, he wiped off the steam his breath had made on the window and stepped back.  
Dan tapped him on the shoulder. “You ready?” he asked, letting out his hand.  
Jack smiled, his cheeks warming up against the numbing winter chill. He took Dan’s hand, threading his fingers in between his. “I’m ready.”  
A bell above the door rang as they walked in. The sound slammed into Jack’s chest, straining the breath he was taking. A few of the multi-coloured heads turned to look at them for a moment. Jack gave them the best smile he could, all the while feeling his soul slowly draining from his body. Against his will, his head ran through all of the horrible things they could be thinking right now. _What is that idiot doing there? Bet he’s gonna cry like a little baby._  
He gulped down the lump in his throat as Dan manoeuvred his way around coffee tables stacked high with more tattoo catalogues towards the front desk.  
Taking a deep breath, he stepped up to the front desk, momentarily dropping Dan’s hand. The receptionist, who was currently occupied by something out of sight on her desk, was heavy-set and had her mauve hair tied up in an elaborate bun. Jack endeavoured to make eye contact with her. When she looked back, his gaze faltered to the side.  
She smiled, showing two rows of bright white teeth. “Hi there! How can I help you?”  
“Uh, I have an appointment…with, uh…Skylar? For 2pm?” He looked at her again for a moment, if only to search for any sign of recognition in her eye. Maybe I got the wrong tattoo parlour?  
But, to his relief, she nodded and took a pen out from behind her ear. She looked down at her desk. “Ah, yeah, that’s right. You’re in good hands.” She looked back up at him and giggled. Jack instinctively mimicked her, though he didn’t really know what was so funny. “Take a seat and she’ll be with you in a few minutes.”  
“Okay!” Jack said, the word coming out on the breath of a deep exhale. He turned back to Dan, adrenaline still swirling around in his head. “Let’s go sit down.” He took Dan’s hand again, since at this point he really couldn’t be trusted not to bang into something in the maze of coffee tables. They took a seat in the rightmost corner of the shop, on the black leather backless seats that Jack had seen through the window.  
Jack rested his cheek against the glass. His left leg shook like a car engine.  
“Are you okay?” Dan asked, a little chuckle in his voice.  
“What, me?” The glass turned his speech into a barely-coherent mumble. “I’m fine. How are you?”  
Dan laughed lightheartedly, his eyes fluttering closed for a moment. “You’re going to be fine, dude.” He grabbed Jack’s hand and started tracing circles on his knuckle with his index finger. “You can squeeze as hard as you like.”  
Jack pulled his fac away from the window. “Oh, I know I can.” He winked, a mischievous grin spilling across his lips. Dan chuckled and nodded in agreement.  
A few minutes later, a slight girl with hair laced in pink, blue and white emerged from the short corridor that led on from the waiting room. She scanned the room indifferently before settling on Dan and Jack. Her face lit up as she strode over to them.  
“Hi guys! I’m Skylar and I’ll be doing your tattoo today.” She brought her hands together, making a small clapping noise. “So which one of you is getting it?”  
Jack jumped up from his seat. “Uh, me.”  
Dan slowly rose from beside him, hooking his arm around Jack’s- just in case he started to wobble from standing up too fast.  
“Great!” She glanced over at Dan. “And are you coming in the room with him?”  
Dan gave her that warm, good-natured smile that always made Jack feel safe. It would be the perfect thing to soothe a crying baby- if babies didn’t inexplicably hate Dan. “Yeah, if that’s okay.”  
“Of course!” she chirped. “Follow me and we can get started.”  
She made her way through the sea of coffee tables and led them down the short corridor she’d just came from. At the end of the corridor, where it was too dark to see from the waiting room, there were three doors. One had a ‘CAUTION: DANGER’ sign on it and the others were ‘STAFF ONLY’. Skylar opened the STAFF ONLY door to the right of her and held it open for them.  
Inside was an assortment of furniture laid out across polished hardwood floor. Various kinds of armchairs and recliners rested against the muddy cream walls and in the middle, there was a slanted couch that reminded Jack of an operating table. In the far-right corner, there was a small bookcase beside the large curtained window on the back wall. It could’ve just as easily have been a psychologist’s office.  
As they stepped into the room, Skylar spun around to face them and clasped her hands together again. “Right, so what are we doing today?”  
Jack jumped microscopically; Dan only noticed it when he felt his arm jerk against his. “Uh, yeah, I…” With his free hand, he rifled through his pocket and brought out a little crumpled scrap of paper. On it was a print-out of the Bold Hunter’s Mark from Bloodbourne. He hesitantly pushed it towards her.  
She took it off his hands and evened out all the creases. A grin came across her face as she studied it. “Big gamer, then?”  
Her smile was infectious. “Yeah, yeah!” Jack nodded energetically.  
She looked up. “Where do you want it?”  
“Uh, just on my arm, here.” Jack rubbed his hand over his forearm.  
“Alright, no problem. Just the entire section up to your elbow?”  
“Yup.”  
She nodded, and looked at the piece of paper again. “Alright, so if I had to give a ballpark…” She sucked her cheeks in and looked up at them. “…Maybe about £125 for two hours? And a £20 deposit, up front.”  
The numbers slammed into Jack at first, but then he remembered he’d brought along £200 just in case. “That’s fine.” His voice was weak when he spoke; he could only put it down to the nerves slowly coming back to him. He reached into his pocket, fished out a £20 note and handed it over to her. She took it and gave him a warm smile.  
“Awesome! Alright, have a lie down and I’ll bring everything through.” She pointed towards the slanted couch.  
Jack glanced over at Dan, and then they started walking towards the couch. She sidestepped them and disappeared through the door.  
Jack pulled himself up onto the end of the couch and then shuffled his way up until his head was resting on the elevated portion. Dan crouched down beside him so that they were at eye level.  
“Are you alright?” Dan asked.  
Jack puffed out air. “Yeah. Still a little bit nervous, y’know?”  
Dan nodded. “You’re alright. I’m here, and that girl doesn’t seem like the type of person to go poisoning people.”  
Jack stared up at the ceiling. “Thanks for that, Dan,” he said, his words strained.  
Dan cringed, the muscles in his belly tightening. _You’re not helping_. “Sorry.”  
Jack laughed. “It’s alright.”  
“Do you wanna hold my hand whilst it’s getting done?”  
Jack scoffed, turning his head towards Dan. “What age do you think I _am_?”  
Dan threw his arms up in joke surrender. “Alright, _geez_. I was just suggesting.”  
A few moments later, the door roughly swung open and Skylar appeared in the doorway, pushing a small metal cart. Behind her, a young acne-ridden boy with ruffled brown hair was carrying a fold-up table of some description.  
“Thanks for waiting, guys!” she called. Her voice filled the room like birdsong.  
She pushed the tray up to the end of the couch. With the threat of impeding tray-death, Dan jumped up and walked around to the other side of Jack’s head. Her young assistant unfolded the table along the elevated section.  
“Alright, just stick your arm on here,” Skylar said, gesturing to the padded fold-out table.  
Jack’s arm trembled ever so slightly as he put it on the table. As she sped over to the metal tray, his breaths became frantic again.  
“Hey, you okay?” Dan’s soft voice in his left ear was almost enough to steel his nerves- for a moment, at least.  
“Danny, I’m fuckin’ scared.” The name ‘Danny’ felt almost foreign in his mouth.  
Dan put his hand on Jack’s side. “You’re alright, I’m here.”  
“You keep sayin’ that.”  
Dan smiled and shrugged. Oddly enough, the corniness of it all just warmed up his cheeks. “Well, it’s true.”  
She came back over, wielding what looked to be a massive blue pen. A brass tube stuck out of the end of the pen and latched onto a long metal cylinder. At the tip of the pen, there was a cluster of sharp needles. “Okay! Are we good to go?”  
Jack took a deep breath, his eyes slowly scanning over the tip of the gun. Like four shots, going all at once. “I think so, yeah.”  
“Okay, cool!” She reached over and dragged the metal tray towards her. Dan noticed that the shelves contained numerous different pots and brushes- almost like a painter’s cabinet. Jack was too busy staring at his arm, imagining four different needles piercing it at the same time. He shuddered at the thought.  
Her assistant, who had been hovering idly around the room since he arrived, pulled an armchair over from the side of the room. She sat down in it, uttered a mechanical “thanks” and returned to the task at hand. “Now, this might sting a little.”  
Jack gulped. For some cursed reason, his eyes hyper-fixated on the tattoo gun. The needles, slowly emerging from the tip, and finally- swiping at his skin.  
His face screwed up. With his free hand, he reached to the side and frantically felt around. He palmed Dan’s face, gripped his chin, poked his stomach- _nothing_. But, a second later, Dan’s cold fingers intertwined with his and his shoulders slumped down. His long, calloused hands dwarfed Jack’s by a good few inches- they’d always laughed about it. “You’re alright. I’m here.”  
Jack squeezed Dan’s hand until it started to go a light shade of crimson. Almost like a knee-jerk reaction, Dan let out a stifled laugh.  
“You’ll get used to it,” Skylar said as the needles shot in and out of his skin. “It’s just the initial shock. Don’t worry.”  
Over the course of the next five minutes, Jack’s grip on Dan’s hand slowly loosened, eventually allowing it to regain circulation. He never fully let go of it, though.  
Two and a half hours turned out to be a lot longer than he’d expected it to be, though not necessarily in a bad way. Soon enough, the feeling of needles stabbing his skin faded away into the background and conversation started to flow. They talked about the tattoo- about Bloodbourne, about Dark Souls and about gaming. The conversation found its way to Dan and Jack, about what they _were_. Even five months on, hearing Dan refer to him as ‘ _my boyfriend_ ’ still made his heart flutter like they were on their first date. Skylar mentioned having a gay cousin, and Dan chuckled to himself as he realised that he _was_ the gay cousin now.  
The shading and the colouring turned out to be the easiest part. Jack barely even noticed the sensation of pain before it disappeared into the section of his brain meant for irrelevant things. He found himself watching the ink stabbing itself into his skin, transfixed; barely able to keep up a conversation. Somehow, the fact that it was his skin being pierced by a multitude of needles was so far away from him that it had no bearing.  
Finally, Skylar lifted the tattoo pen from his arm and silently studied her work. Jack imagined she was checking for tone, consistency, little bits she’d missed- things that would stick out at you like a cow with a blowhorn if you did this for a living. “Right, that’s the tattoo done.” Jack’s back slowly started to rise. Skylar lurched out of her seat, her hands hovering over Jack’s stomach. “Wait, wait a minute.” She smiled and strode towards the metal tray.  
Jack turned his head towards Dan, whose smile was spilling out over his cheeks.  
“Hey there,” Dan said, in the kind of light, airy voice you’d use for someone who’d just woken up. “You did good.”  
Jack rolled his eyes. “Shush.”  
She returned a few minutes later with a long roll of cling film. “Right, if you could just lift your arm for me.”  
Jack did so, keeping a vigilant watch on the ink in case it somehow fell out of his skin. She wound the roll around his arm, covering the ink in a reflective sheen. “There you go,” she said as she tore the cling film around his arm away from the roll and smoothed down the little tab left hanging on. She stood up, stretching as the sleeping muscles in her back and legs came back to life. “Have a look. Are you happy with it?”  
Jack looked at his arm. Even though it’d been close to finished for a good while now, this was the first time he was actually taking it in; seeing it as a tattoo and not just ink being jammed into his skin. A long black staff with two nodes sticking out on either side, then reaching back towards the staff. On his skin, permanently- there to remind him of the late nights, the early mornings, all of the time he’d sacrificed to something he loved with all his heart. _That’s basically my life, now._  
At some point in his reverie, he felt a long, calloused hand wrapping around his side. Dan had an odd scent to him; at the beginning of their relationship, it annoyed Jack to no end that he couldn’t place it. After a while, though, it faded into the background, automatically translating into something that roughly meant _home_ , but without a literal translation. But as they stood there, both of their gazes absorbed by the ink on Jack’s skin, it came over him for the first time in a while. It was like…the smell of the sun’s rays on a hot summer day, combined with some sort of bread. …Or something.  
He glanced over at Skylar. “I love it.”  
Her eyes lit up, and then dulled into a quiet understanding. She smiled back. “Awesome! Should we go out and settle everything, then?” Her voice was a bit less chirpy, as if it couldn’t quite break through the thickness of the air in the room.  
Jack looked up at Dan. “Yeah. I think we’re good to go.”

Out in the waiting room, the first burst of euphoria set into Jack’s chest. It reminded him of walking out of the movie theatre when he was a kid, feeling like the world had become a slightly different place now that the story he’d just experienced was lodged in his brain.  
“Oh, we should get this one!” Jack jabbed at the glass the glass of the large cabinet resting against the wall across from the cash register. It was filled with different bottles of aftercare lotion, tapers, plugs and earrings. For a moment, his gaze had lingered over the plugs and he’d started to wonder if he could pull off that look again, but for now his attention was fixed firmly on the aftercare lotion. He had no idea there were so many different kinds.  
Dan stood beside him, a hand around his waist. A faint but heavy smile came over his face as he watched Jack’s eyes light up over and over again. “Why that one?”  
“Because it’s…” He pressed his fingertip to the glass and let his finger rest against it. “…Yellow. And the label looks cool.”  
Dan chuckled, letting his eyes flutter closed for a moment. “Alright.”  
After settling the bill for the tattoo, the cashier was more than happy to come over and open the locked cabinet for them. She also handed them a little leaflet that rehashed most of the aftercare tips that Skylar had given them as they walked back to the waiting room. And it was a good thing, too; knowing Jack, he’d have forgotten half the things she said by the time they walked out the door.  
With an extra £1 added onto their bill for the aftercare lotion, they stepped out of the shop into the freezing alley once again. 

The bell above the door shrieked a fond goodbye to them as they left.  
Jack nuzzled into Dan’s forearm, almost by instinct. Somehow, his jacket was always warm, no matter how cold the air was around it. Dan chuckled and wrapped his arm around Jack again.  
“How do you feel?” Dan asked.  
Jack took another look at his forearm, bearing the tattoo for all to see. “I feel pretty fuckin’ good.”  
“Good.” Dan tilted his head towards Jack’s, covering his face in dark brown curls. For once in his life, Jack was actually thankful for it. Come to think of it, that was another part of him that always seemed to retain heat no matter how cold it got. Were Americans all just human radiators? “You were super _brave_ today, dude.”  
Jack rolled his eyes, smiling off to the side. “Come on. What age do you think I _am_?”


End file.
